(bi)gital» | English

Project 2020

Tomás — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 21:28:15 +0000

Having no doubt about that “broadband connectivity and mobility are changing the way we live, the way we work, the way markets function, and the way societies operate”, Ericsson have created a series of interviews asking 20 thinkers about the year 2020.

In the group there are absolutely brilliant people like Vint Cerf – the father of the Internet –, Michael Dell, Arianna Huffington or Hans Rosling.

The project is called Ericsson 2020 Shaping Ideas and this is just an excerpt:

This entry was written by Tomás and posted on 18 November, 2010 at 7:28 pm. It is filed under In video and tagged future, ideas, technology. Bookmark the permalink.
The content on (bi)gital» is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike licence.
1996-2013 | (bi)gital»

Education paradigms

Tomás — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 04:12:44 +0000

Education – as Ken Robinson explains – is always having a rationale behind. In the schooling system as we know it today, these collectively shared believes are provenient from the age of enlightenment and industrial capitalism.

Living in the early days of a new era as we are, everything seems to be ready to change. Probably, we will be leaving behind the linear way of learning, so common – and painful – until now. The movement has already started. It will take time – educational institutions are most of the times really slow to adopt disruptive changes – but it will certainly happen. If only children are not forced to be on anesthetics…

In the video, Robinson’s ideas are beautifully illustrated by RSA Animate.

This entry was written by Tomás and posted on 19 October, 2010 at 2:12 am. It is filed under In video and tagged education, Rhizomatic Education, Sir Ken Robinson. Bookmark the permalink.
The content on (bi)gital» is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike licence.
1996-2013 | (bi)gital»

The future of the book

Tomás — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 12:59:56 +0000

Or is it the book of the future…?

The people at IDEO are experimenting with tablets and three different ways of navigate – or dive into – stories. In an absolute ‘tabular’ way of thinking (I wrote about it in Spanish: Del papiro al hipertexto, a review of Christian Vandendorpe’s book, and Narrativas relacionales), narrative obtains a multidimensional space. I think that this was always there, in the proper nature of narrative. But with the Gutemberg’s parenthesis we just never saw it.

The Future of the Book. from IDEO on Vimeo.

This entry was written by Tomás and posted on 22 September, 2010 at 10:59 am. It is filed under In video and tagged books, future, reading, tablets. Bookmark the permalink.
The content on (bi)gital» is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike licence.
1996-2013 | (bi)gital»

Can children learn by themselves?

Tomás — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 14:59:45 +0000

Education scientist Sugata Mitra talking at TED, telling us how children – given the proper tools – can use technology to advance in their education, even without adult supervision.

He pointing out one of the many problems education is facing today, a problematic circle constructed around this fact: the best teachers and schools are not available where people need them the most. Therefore, having access to remote resources through the good use of technology can be really useful under this conditions.

And the results could be too good to be true.

For extra notes on the experiment he was conducting, see «Using computers to teach children with no teachers» at the BBC News site.

This entry was written by Tomás and posted on 9 September, 2010 at 12:59 pm. It is filed under In video and tagged education, technology, TED. Bookmark the permalink.
The content on (bi)gital» is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike licence.
1996-2013 | (bi)gital»

Philip Zimbardo’s secret powers of time

Tomás — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 16:59:05 +0000

Having lived in small towns and big cities (let alone different countries and cultures), time and its different ways of understanding it, has always been one of my biggest intellectual preoccupations. Probably since the beginning of the Modernity we have been confused with the idea that time is a constant flux that can be precisely measured and that we have to adjust our lives to this tick. Sometimes, I really doubt about it.

In this video there is a beautiful visual unfolding of Philip Zimbardo’s explanation of the different ways of understanding time (see his book “The Time Paradox: The New Psychology of Time That Will Change Your Life”).

And an extra note: it is amazing how clear even the most complex concepts evolve when they are drawn instead of written. I consider that we all should develop this visual literacy and being able of not only seeing and appreciating it but also doing it.

This entry was written by Tomás and posted on 15 July, 2010 at 2:59 pm. It is filed under In video and tagged culture, time. Bookmark the permalink.
The content on (bi)gital» is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike licence.
1996-2013 | (bi)gital»

Education and linearity

Tomás — Wed, 26 May 2010 17:48:33 +0000

In a recent appearance at TED, Sir Ken Robinson – the British author who shocked us a few years ago saying that schools kill creativity – hits the nail on the head again. On his deep analysis of the actual education system, he is telling us that life is not linear. So why education should be? He claims that this is something that we accept without further questions because we are used to it. But we have to make a change. Not an evolutionary change but a revolutionary one.

He explains that we have an education system that works as a factory (I imagine input and output, a mounting chain, clear goals, objectives and careers) and that we have to shift this (back?) to an agricultural model: creating good conditions so people can flourish. Actually, this reminds me about Thomas Bley – a brilliant design educator – quoting Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

I absolutely agree with him and I am thinking that perhaps the linear way of thinking we have now is related – among other causes – to the ‘Gutemberg’s parenthesis’: we used to have a more organic understanding of the world that was forgotten (mainly by the invention of the book). Maybe we will slowly come back to it.

This entry was written by Tomás and posted on 26 May, 2010 at 3:48 pm. It is filed under In video and tagged education, Rhizomatic Education, Sir Ken Robinson, TED. Bookmark the permalink.
The content on (bi)gital» is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike licence.
1996-2013 | (bi)gital»

Austin center for design

Tomás — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 20:00:11 +0000

A new institution led by the recognized interaction designer Jon Kolko (associate creative director at frog design) is calling the attention of the design community: the Austin center for design. On their own words, this organization exists “to transform society through design and design education.” We would like to subscribe to this idea!

It seems to be – and the recent talk by Tim Brown (CEO of IDEO) on TED, urging designers to think big, went in that direction – that design is moving forward (maybe backwards: our profession has a lost tradition of this way of thinking) and avoiding the banal and futile use of the term, where design seems to be confined to act on the surface (the top part of Jesse James Garret’s diagram about the elements of user experience). Therefore, as this happens at the very last part of any given process, designers are usually called on board where most decisions are already taken. We have the task of making them nice, easy to use, beautiful…

I’d like to salute Kolko and the people behind this new institution and hope to see a myriad of enterprises like this one flourishing all over the world.

More information

This entry was written by Tomás and posted on 28 April, 2010 at 6:00 pm. It is filed under In general and tagged design, education, wicked problems. Bookmark the permalink.
The content on (bi)gital» is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike licence.
1996-2013 | (bi)gital»

Paola Antonelli on the designers’ role

Tomás — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 14:52:18 +0000

Johnny Holland interviewed Paola Antonelli, the design curator at the New York Museum of Modern Art (see Design and the Elastic Mind: An Interview with Paola Antonelli).

One of the questions capture my attention because she’s explaining what does she think about the role of designers and the shift from “toasters and posters”:

What’s happening is that designers used to be those that made chairs, or those that made posters. Instead, right now they look at the way people live and they try to translate their observations into better products, better interfaces.

It’s is surely something that we all designers have to have in mind at this time: almost everything that we do is immerse on a cultural network and not anymore isolated on our local corner. Therefore, the idea of being antrophologists – as Antonelli clearly pointed out – is absolutely valuable.

This entry was written by Tomás and posted on 23 January, 2010 at 12:52 pm. It is filed under In general and tagged design. Bookmark the permalink.
The content on (bi)gital» is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike licence.
1996-2013 | (bi)gital»

About the International Journal of Communication

Tomás — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 17:24:36 +0000

Reading a post by Carlos Scolari about the publication of his paper on ‘Narrativas transmediáticas’ (Transmedia Storytelling), I came across the International Journal of Communication. The publication is an online, multi-media, academic journal – originated in the USC Annenberg School of Communication and directed by Manuel Castells y Larry Gross – that publish articles with a main focus on communication, being also open to contributions from ‘the many disciplines and approaches that meet at the crossroads that is communication study.’

Among the many things that capture my attention while reading about the publication, the concept of ‘open access’ is the one I like the most. As they clearly say,

Open Access enables authors to obtain the maximum possible exposure for their work. Freely available papers are read more, cited more, and have more impact than ones available only to paid subscribers.

It is a very good example to show that sometimes the academic media environment moves forward. I wish I could see more like this coming from the design community, where the most established journals are available under a paid subscription model.

This entry was written by Tomás and posted on 17 September, 2009 at 3:24 pm. It is filed under In general and tagged academic, journals, open access. Bookmark the permalink.
The content on (bi)gital» is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike licence.
1996-2013 | (bi)gital»

roericht.net

Carol — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 19:09:32 +0000

I found yesterday the wonderful website of Hans (Nick) Roericht. He was a student/lecturer at the hfg ulm and later on at the hdk Berlin. His studio, roericht praxis ulm was inside the former hfg building. Nowadays he created a foundation nick-roericht-stiftung to promote talented designers. Among his famous works we can mention the early ones like TC100 Stackable tableware which is part of the MoMa collection, he was part of the team that worked for the Munich Olympics in 1972 and for the corporate identity of Lufthansa. His extensive career (1967 to 1999) includes impressive research, product and communication design for firms like Bosch, Siemens, Rosenthal, etc.

His website (German only unfortunately) has many interesting corners like videos, photos of works, people, design, the HFG Synopsis, his library with circa 3400 book, etc.

I spent quite some time watching his photo series, I particularly loved the Sammlung gemischt a sample of boxes with objects that he has collected over the time. Apart from the objects inside, some of them really amazing, belonging to the German culture/everydaylife, the photos are tidy set and taken under the same optimal conditions, and this fact that makes the sample more consistent and interesting to follow. I also recommend the serie with knifes that contains some peculiar pieces.

Another photo section contains documentation of important stages of product research and design, a must see if you‘re interested in design and people who has visited the office from 1968 to 1992. Watching randomly I found Otl Aicher, and Joachim Krausse –probably there are some more that I am not able to recognize in their young years. The clothing and hair styles from the ‘70’s are awesome!

All of the photos depict the simple, neat, precise design concept. A real diamond in the abundance of data, despite the use of Courier for the text that I find quite tiring to read.

This entry was written by Carol and posted on 7 August, 2009 at 5:09 pm. It is filed under In general and tagged complexity, design, Hans (Nick) Roericht, hfg ulm, ideas. Bookmark the permalink.
The content on (bi)gital» is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike licence.
1996-2013 | (bi)gital»